Let the Old Dead Make Room for the Young Dead
Milan Kundera
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars
3.75
· 8 ratings · 48 pages · Published: 1963
Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles.
A chance encounter leads a man to spend the afternoon with an older woman, now a widow, who escaped him fifteen years earlier. Neither of them doubts that the day will end in disgust, but for one intimate moment each finds a way to overcome mortality.
Written in 1969, before Milan Kundera was known to English-speaking readers, this story renders male and female characters painful equals, and prompted Philip Roth to admire its 'detached Chekhovian tenderness'.